Many and Many a Year Ago

by Selcuk Altun

  I wondered how I must have looked to Samsun, who, when he came to pick me up the next morning and take me to the stone house, could say nothing more than “Good morning, Captain.” The host and hostess attended breakfast in fashionable attire. I set up for my presentation, and it was amusing to see them take the chairs closest to the stereo. “I chose one piece each from twenty tango singers. If you feel you’ve been hearing the same thing after number five, please alert me,” I said before starting. Maybe this was why they managed to look interested all the way through.

  After the music, when Haluk proposed that I read to Sim, I could have shouted, “Yes! Gladly!” I was startled when he linked our arms together for the climb to the second floor. Three walls of the spacious salon were covered with paintings. “Do you like painting?” asked Sim with a kind of moan. Nothing could more precisely have expressed the pain of being unable to see.

  I probably disappointed my inner voice by composing a reply like, “Actually, I tend to feel as if I’m both reading poems and viewing paintings when I’m listening to baroque music, Sim.”

  The gray cat curled up at the end of the brass bed snarled at me. Momentarily animated, Sim said, “And this is my roommate, Ash.” I noticed the lively colors of the hand-woven rug on the floor. Then I saw the seven thick books on the antique desk that was a gift from Count Nadolsky. I was stunned. Marcel Proust’s magnum opus was to be read, according to Nalan Erçelik, when one reached the age of thirty-five. “I’ve aged ten years in the last two.” said Sim, “I’m ready for Remembrance of Things Past.”

  We took our places in the two bamboo chairs across from the desk and I began to read Swann’s Way:

  For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes,

  when I had put out my candle, my eyes would

  close so quickly that I had not even time to

  say to myself, “I’m falling asleep.” And

  half an hour later the thought that it

  was time to go to sleep would

  awaken me; I would wake as

  if to put away the book which

  I imagined was still in my

  hands, and to blow out

  the light; I had

  gone on

  thinking,

  ...

  *

  Those lines were the overture to a three-thousand-page symphony of prose. While the sentences tasted of poetry, the paragraphs tasted of tirades. I paid no attention to the sardonic smile brought, no doubt, to Sim’s face by my naïve enthusiasm. My listener fell asleep during our reading session, and as I pulled a purple bedspread over her, on which was written, “The Limits of My Colors are the Limits of my World,” I felt as if I’d known her for months. The jealous Ash snarled as I wiped the perspiration from her brow with tissue paper, but I felt as relieved as a private who’s survived his first watch. Sim rarely went out and when she did she needed assistance. Dutifully I walked arm-in-arm with her through the olive groves after our afternoon tea. She gathered that I was an anti-humorist. To set her at ease, I told her a little about my life.

  That evening, as I returned for what would be my last night at the hotel, I was feeling restless. Next morning I was to move into the stone house. We were passing the “Welcome to Ayvalık” sign when Samsun said, “Captain, you can see now that Miss Sim is a lot higher caliber than those Istanbul girls angling to get married, even if she can’t see. My mother sends her regards to you. She says if the lead pilot marries Sim, she and Renk will be at their service twenty-four hours a day. And me, I say that if you were to marry our angel, the lowly Samsun would be yours to command until he dies …”

  From the window of my room on the ground floor of the stone house, the surrounding landscape looked like a gray-green ski run. I might have exercised my imagination by chasing a gray tulle curtain stretched like a line on the horizon between me and the sea. I grew familiar with the voices of the morning chorus perched in the wild fruit trees next to my room. As for the evening concert of migrating birds, it usually ended when the furious and arrogant wind blew down from Mount Ida. Sorrow, Solitude, Serenity, Scribe, Saddle, Sobriety, Scrap, Sigh, Spleen, Sortie: of the names Haluk’s wife Nalan had bestowed on the tree-dervishes of the olive grove, these were the ones that stuck in my mind. Ever since my accident I’d been unable to fall asleep unless I lay face down, hugging my pillow. But now as soon as I turned off the lights and stretched out on the bed, glad not to know how many nights I would be there, my eyes closed before I had time to worry about getting to sleep. Even Arrow was aware that my presence had eased the tension in the grove. Whenever I went outside he ran up to allow me to pat his head respectfully. When we were eye to eye, I understood that, unlike Samsun, whatever he might do for me would be free of conditions. I started wondering whether it was nature that had set me up to settle down in this quiet olive orchard.

  We thought that if I read 120 pages a day, we wouldn’t tire the novel’s delicate characters nor would we be startled by the twists and turns of Proust’s time tunnel. To chase the time that was left we would head for the beach or visit other local attractions. Renk in her maxi-skirts would come along to C.’s unspoiled beaches. On the road to Mount Ida or Edremit, Sim would scold Samsun, saying, “Don’t drive this Jeep like you’re quarreling with it.” I didn’t mind it when the busybody siblings left us alone together to increase the efficacy of their mission.

  Sim tried not to be a burden on me, but her concern was unnecessary. I got used to her taking my arm on our strolls, and was duly annoyed by the stares of the young layabouts whose eyes, full of bad intentions, followed her. To me it was absurd that she didn’t believe I took pleasure in reading restaurant menus to her or cutting up the meat on her plate. She never acted impulsively and never uttered a frivolous word. That she possessed a rich inner world was clear from her questions and conversation. Anyway, I wasn’t expecting to become her confidant. On our fourth day we started Within a Budding Grove. Since Haluk had gone to Cunda to meet his hunting pals, we were on our own. At dinner that evening I was surprised when Sim slipped into the familiar “you” after two glasses of wine.

  “I’m sure that my grandfather has explained down to the smallest detail what I’ve been through. Well, I hope you haven’t been hurt by love too,” she said as Arrow announced his presence by pressing his nose against my right arm. The giant Kangal dog stood like a totem beside me, reminding me of Suat’s tiger. Suddenly I felt like a mortal confined within a comic book. It took me a few seconds to decide not to think about what I might do were I not intimidated by my inner voice. Sim had found a way to enable me to offer her moral support.

  “As a young boy I was in love with a ghost whose small tombstone was in Z. cemetery.” I said “Her name was Aslı. After that there was Dolores O’Riordan and France Gall, for the sake of their husky voices … at the Air Force Academy I lost interest in my girlfriend, whose inner world seemed to have shrunk the two years I’d known her. The truth is—I’ve never told anyone else this—my secret love up until the time I crashed it was my F-16 …”

  I never liked couples who, after making so-called vows of love and marriage, went for each other’s jugular. After the story of Esther and Ali I began thinking that marriages—like art—should be kneaded out of talent and achievement. As I was wondering whether the author of my clumsily improvised response was really me, I guessed that Sim had already figured out that I didn’t bear a love scar.

  At the end of my first week we began The Guermantes Way. By then I’d met all the expectations that went along with the “savior” status which befriending Sim had conferred upon me. But there were also awkward moments, such as when I asked Haluk, “Sir, haven’t you had a lot to drink?” Or when I offended Zakir and his family by failing even to ask them to fetch some water when they had averred their eternal service. The first one to notice me had been Arrow, the establishment’s secret philosopher. Now, when Haluk remarked, “I don’t think this dog takes anybody but you so seriously,” Arrow for
the first time seemed to regard me with suspicion.

  One day while we were listening to Albinoni’s oboe concerto Sim said, “Before you came, the only thing there was to do was to paint abstract pictures with virtual brushes on the virtual canvasses that I stretched on my imagination.” I failed to grasp this as an early warning. Next morning Sim yelled at her grandfather and didn’t come down for breakfast. Behaving like a psychologist, I went to her room. She was in bed with the cat in her arms. No, she didn’t want me to open the window. I wasn’t offended by this; I sat down in my usual chair and began to read. The treacherous cat snarled at me and left the room. After an hour, thinking she was asleep, I pulled the bedspread over her, but jumped back when she threw it off. In fact I’d always felt hesitant about looking directly into her face, as though it were a sorrowful painting, because I was afraid she might feel my gaze on her and get the wrong idea. By evening she had not emerged from her room. Haluk went out to see an old friend of his from his lycée years in Ören. I drank three beers while dining alone, then made a last sally to her room. She was listening to a radio program called “From Inside Evening.” I was touched. “Do you have a problem?” did not seem like a question that would elicit the right kind of reply. Still, I should not have asked, just to make conversation, who the abstract artist was whose reproductions were hanging on the walls of my room.

  “He’s the greatest living painter in the world. If you could manage to understand Howard Hodgkin’s work you would realize that its music and its poetry are beyond categorization.” I didn’t think I deserved such a sharp-tongued reply. I went back downstairs to share my troubles with Arrow, and decided abruptly to get out of this depressing place.

  It was the last morning. Just as I read “The thing I needed was to have Madame de Stemaria …” Sim’s cell phone rang for the first time in nine days. I was so happy to hear that two of her university friends were arriving next morning to spend a week with her. Sim tried politely to keep the room arrangements she was making with Bereket a secret from me, but I assured her, “I’m going back today.” She acted surprised, but as I expected, she didn’t insist on my staying. I packed my bags, angry with myself for having caricatured my personal problems just to amuse her. I was certain that I’d paid my debt to Suat. (Or were his expectations confined to my passing along Count Nadolsky’s diary to Haluk?)

  Fearful of upsetting Sim, the olive-grove folk saw me off rather formally. As we set out for Ayvalık, Arrow chased the Jeep until he was out of breath, as I knew he would. Samsun found me a seat on the bus to Istanbul. He probably felt embarrassed about my manner of leaving, but I had no intention of consoling the would-be self-sacrificing loyalist. As we bid farewell he said, “Captain, you are the marshal of our hearts; may God’s grace be with you,” and kissed my hand; and I looked forward to being alone again.

  On the bus I settled down with my iPod and closed my eyes. I tried to marshal the names that Nalan had allocated to her favorite trees: Afife, Bacchus, Ceberut, Demeter, Ebabil, Flora, Gazel, Hera, Imza, Jupiter, Kanca …

  VIII

  I liked the way Esther and Ali Uzel were disappointed if I didn’t show up for dinner and spend the night with them at least once a week. My respect for Esther only grew because she never tried to match me with some rich family’s daughter.

  Rifat Demren, the cousin of Esther’s neighbor, heard somehow about my passion for music and said he wanted to meet me. He was the director of Radio Estanbul. This radio station, which addressed itself to the city’s art lovers, happened to be my favorite. It was on the air twenty hours a day with jazz, classical, and world music, as well as short pieces on art, archaeology, and travel. Except for occasionally plugging a big contributor, it was commercial-free; and the assertive female voice left no doubt that if you wanted news and weather you were in the wrong place. Every night the station signed off by recommending a CD or a book to listeners still awake and then sank into silence with a nostalgic song. This lullaby changed monthly, and some nights I stayed up until three just to hear it.

  It was for Esther’s sake that I agreed to meet Rifat. Even if he made a job offer, I wouldn’t have dreamt of accepting. The dank smell issuing from the second floor warned me that I was traveling into the past. There were Ottoman-era name plates on the third-floor doors, which opened probably once a year. The fourth-floor offices were occupied by pseudo-foreign companies. I recognized those with Jewish agents by their framed inscriptions, and those with Armenians by the accented curses oozing out through the doors. On the fifth floor all but two doors sported Radio Estanbul signs in blue and black. I approached the door with a brass plate that said “Aesthete Platform,” and was disturbed when I realized its significance. Had the huge gray and pink stained-glass skylight above me not caught my attention I would have hurried out of that building. But while I ruminated on why I might be fixating on that particular color harmony, a melodious voice called my name. A woman with an artificial leg apologized on behalf of her boss for the five-minute delay and escorted me to his office.

  The walls were covered with giant pictures of Cappadocia. Rifat Demren walked in and sat down behind his desk. He looked to be in his sixties, a little tubby but lovable. His gray beard didn’t surprise me. He wore blue jeans. Perhaps because he wanted to downplay his expertise, he focused his gaze on the antique pen case on his desk. Skillfully he put me through my paces. I regretted criticizing the station for producing so many programs for the newly-initiated and not enough for the cognoscenti. When we both took a breather, it dawned on me that what the noticeably large pictures contributed to the room was serenity. I assumed that Rifat Demren was mentally preparing a job offer, which I was mentally preparing to refuse, but I was wrong.

  “My aunt used to tell me, ‘You can’t become a diplomat but maybe you should be an MP.’ I had a better idea: I was going to wage war, all on my own, on the malaise in this country by establishing the most highly specialized radio station in the world, at the risk of making no money at all. We think we’ve been pretty successful, judging by the kind of reaction we’ve been getting.

  “The most significant asset of this station is the attitude of its DJs. These able and honest people with unassuming artistic hearts have taken good care of Radio Estanbul. For a long time now I’ve covered our financial losses by using most of my rental income, and I’ve kept the station from being gobbled up by the local global media giants. My life’s mission is to keep it alive as it aspires to perfection …”

  As I prepared to take my leave he uttered the sentence that compelled me to accept his job offer: “This country needs a classical music DJ as badly as it needs an F-16 pilot.”

  I joined Radio Estanbul, waiving the symbolic fee they proffered. My program was called “Bar Bar Baroque” and it was well established by the second broadcast. I tried to keep my patter plain and simple, avoiding technical details. I knew that statements like “I thought it was Allah speaking when I heard the ney for the first time,” or “I learned from the papers that the man who turned me into a classical music addict was a drug dealer” wouldn’t attract the wrong kind of attention. At the end of my first month I took on another program, “Since Stravinsky,” where I introduced twentieth-century composers to our audience. And, at Rifat Bey’s request, I wrote personal essays under a pseudonym for a music magazine called Klass.

  Most of the DJs got together every couple of weeks for dinner. They counted their meals in the dim restaurant as the fees they refused to accept. I came to like this team of academics, writers, poets, retired musicians, civil servants, and rentiers, who refrained from bringing sports and politics into the conversation. The youngest of them was ten years older than me. The reservations they at first had about me, probably because of my spell in the military, were hilarious. I warmed to Rifat Demren, who was like a walking encyclopedia. He was an idealist full of secrets. He’d made a substitute home out of some rooms next to the studio, and he spent more time there than he did in his Gümüşsüyü flat with
the sea view. I had the notion, during my nights on Istiklal, that he read Bruce Chatwin as he sat listening to the radio transmissions from the other side of the wall.

  He liked to think that he extracted pleasure from life frame by frame. He would tire himself out running from football to ballet, from the horse races to the opera; he knew every kebab master and sushi chef in town. Rumor had it that this refined man, whose passion for radio was like mine for my deceased F-16, was asexual. (I was sure, on the other hand, that being alone simply increased his pleasure in life.) He would invite me to his office after my shift, where his conversations about radio never failed to interest me. We went out to dinner every other week. After the second glass of wine would come the boring reminiscences of school years, but he would raise his head like a cobra whenever the talk turned to radio. I respected the fact that he never gave me the nostalgic lover’s sob story.

  I took him to the Golden Fish in Cibali. The specialty of this restaurant, whose ambience, after Professor Ali advised them to change the lighting, stirred the desire to drink, was sea bass in paper, prepared again according to the professor’s recipe. The place was two-thirds empty on that pleasant autumn evening. On the other side of the Golden Horn, Pera looked as proud as a steamer about to set sail on its maiden voyage to center stage in a Fellini film. As my boss talked, I finished choosing the pieces for my Von Biber program.

  Suddenly an explosion of atonal and fake laughter caused everyone in the room to crane toward a table in the corner. I studied the two middle-aged dandies thoroughly; their derision seemed to be directed toward our table.